May. 1st, 2007

May. 1st, 2007

I've been saying for years that McDonald's Corp. ought to diversify into biodiesel. This franchise owner is saving around $350/week in fuel cost, and will recover the cost of the conversion in eight months (per car). I wonder how much he is saving in disposal charges?

I've been thinking that love is a box of crayons. Not any box, but the 64 color big box with the sharpener. Sure, there are bigger boxes now, but that was the one I coveted, the one with complex hues and metallics. I couldn't imagine a bigger box. I used to think some of the colors were grotesque; I questioned who would want green-yellow. Hopeful about others, I tried to use burnt umber. I wasn't allowed to use silver or gold, because I wasn't old enough to handle them. Now that I am, they're nice, but I'm just as likely to select azure.

Speaking of green-yellow, the hypenated names taught me about subtle differences. There was blue-green and green-blue, not called teal then, and red-violet and violet-red, and green-yellow/yellow-green. They were distinct, despite being called what sounded alike. Colors are hard to describe, even when they've been given a label.

Over time, the color names have changed, to ones like Screamin' Green. I think love expectations have been remarketed, too, since the 80's.

Black was the color I would wear out the most, the crayon I'd break first. The peeled half-bare crayon. I liked to do the thing where you cover up a calico of mixed colors with a coating of black, then scrape through for multi-hued lines.

I still have my favorites. Green-blue, dark violet, "unrealistic skin color" peach. I use red liberally, copper sparingly. A person could make do with a basic prismatic; I suspect that a lot of people think that a one row box covers the spectrum. You can get depth out of shading, using the crayon harder or softer as you color. They don't blend very well; attempts will yield either a new, unexpected hue or a mess.